To be fair, I think Gimli is pointing out a problem with the original work: How did all those orcs get enough food to live? I’m having trouble picturing an orcish farm, much less orcs producing all the accoutrements needed to run one. Both the book and the movie depict orcs with their own bread. Can you imagine an orcish miller? An orcish milkmaid? An orcish baker, complete with apron and poofy chef’s hat? Imagine a couple of orcs side-by-side in front of a farm American Gothic style.

The food came from south, the taxed lands. Frodo and Sam ponder the same question – “where do these orcs get stuff to eat” when they go around Mordor. On those same pages narrator says something “Little did F&S know about the huge swathes of vassal states to the south”…or something like that.

Sauron used slaves to grow food in the southern part of Mordor. From the Wikipedia article:

In the north of Mordor during the War of the Ring were the great garrisons and forges of war, while surrounding the bitter inland Sea of NÃºrnen to the south lay the vast fields tended for the provision of the armies by hordes of slaves brought in from lands to the east and south.

There was clear reference to the southern realms(south of Mordor) where Sauron held sway and people served Sauron. Goods were brought to Mordor from those lands. From memory I recall reference to the land of Harad.
These people were under his spell. There was a battle between these people and Faramir’s Company in Ithilien. Sam watched part of the battle and saw an oliphant. It was his first look at battle between men.

How lucky that Middle Earthian plate tectonics produce such unlikely collision zones and wall off Mordor from the rest of the world like that.

Stupid Gandalf. Why on (middle) earth didn’t he tell the fellowship to thwart these mighty natural defenses, avoid both the Black Gate *and* Minas Morgul and simply go ’round the back where there aren’t any mountains?

So, i beleive that you are all, in part, correct. Obviously, as more than one of you has pointed out, there is some form of food supplie to the south. Further, i’m pretty sure they hunt, although they say during this book – right before the whole “looks like meat’s back on the menu boys” bit, that they eat rations. I’ve always made the assumtion they the Orcs raided/hunted at least a small bit wile they were out.

As for Sewerman’s point, I’m not exactly sure how much the actual characters would know about that. Gandalf might. Aragorn MIGHT, but i doubt it. So, if during a campain my DM said “the door will not open” with the stop-being-dumb look on his/her face…i would definatly try to find another way around. However, if us as readers were reading this point, well than, we can just flip to the front of the book and use that conviant little map. Or go back through the book, wher we remember someone talking about Mordor, and try to find something there.

At the risk of sounding like a complete geek (as if that is a problem here), I point out that the whole purpose for Gandalf’s attack on the black gate was to draw the Eye of Sauron away from Mount Doom, Frodo & Sam, and The Ring. That’s why there was the dramatic “eyeball roll” and Nazgul recall when Frodo claimed it for his own in such a precarious place.

Hence, “going around the back” wouldn’t have even been considered a valid option, even if it were possible, which it wasn’t.

Remember that this entire operation was a feint and had no hope of succeeding by itself; they had to distract Sauron from the two little hobbits worming their way into the heart of his land, and needed to do so immediately. The whole point was to convince Sauron that one of the captains of the free peoples had the Ring and intended to keep it, and the best way to do that was to brazenly call out the Dark Lord before the Black Gate itself. They didn’t have time to go around the mountains, and even if they had it would have been counter-productive.

Remember also that even if this had not been their intent, regardless of the Ring, they could not defeat Sauron by military force. Sauron forces were overwhelming.

My biology teacher from high school said vertebrates usually only retain 10% of the energy in the food that they consume, while the rest goes to waste. Therefore, if orcs only eat each other, eventually, they’re eventually going to run out of consumable energy. Of course, this was from an American high school teacher, so who knows how accurate it is. Still, I thought it was worth mentioning.

You know, I probably way overanalyzed a statement that was really only meant as a joke, thus ruining the humor factor of said statement. RIGHTEOUS!!!

@DaveArrow: Your teacher was probably right (ANOTHER reason why the movie “the Matrix” SUCKED), but come on guys, HOW OFTEN WERE THOSE FIELDS OF NURN MENTIONED NOW?
AND the vassal states of Mordor, of course.

As for the convenient mountains of Mordor, well, as was said, we are talking about a world were deity-like beings are shaping the land as they want it to be…

While it’s true that in the Matrix humans would make shitty batteries, that also wasn’t the original backstory. As I understand it, The machines intended to use human brains as processors, as they were still massively beyond anything that could be replicated with technology. But the producers thought this idea was too techy/complicated for the average viewer to wrap their head around, so they dumbed it down to what you get in the movies.

Well, i’m lazy, as such, do any of you guys remember the DM saying that Aragon and the gang were only going as a distraction? I don’t remember it. I remmeber it in the book – of course. But i don’t remember the DM mentioning that rather importent fact to the adventures in this comic strip.

Gandalf tried to mention it in the previous strip. He was countermanded by Aragorn, who had….the same plan in different words. Read it again.

What do Orcs eat? Man-flesh(Or Elf-flesh, or dwarf-flesh) is a delicacy, but they DO have farms. There’s a massive inland sea in Mordor, and surrounding it are the lands of Nurn, where humans constantly work the land to keep the war machune going.

Recall from The Silmarillion; the Misty Mountains themselves were raised by Melkor (Morgoth) to guard the rear flank of Angband and Thangdordrim. Beleriand was the obvious frontal assault point as the Elves barely left Beleriand & the Valar would approach from the West. It isn’t far out of line to think of the Mountains of Shadow as another ‘convenient terrafom’, though this implies Morgoth did it. How’s that for foresight?

On another note: Not far from Rohan, and just North of the Dead Marshes, are the Wastes of Rhun and Harad, subject kingdoms to Sauron’s rule. These are probably a lot like the American Mid West,which was once called the Great American Desert mostly because there were no trees… Boromir’s famous horn was a prize from a huge bull (Tolkein called them kine) from this very area. This makes Rhun and Harad the stockyards of Mordor.

I can imagine them singing: “Four & twenty hobbits, baked in a pie” Hence the warning in the movie that “These are NOT for eating!”

Also,remember that this is D&D. Sauron has trolls. Simply line up the bakers, slice up some troll, bake slices in a pie for the orc troops, & by lunchtime the next day the troll will have grown back his “donated” limb!

[Man, oh man, I can almost see the players rubbing their hands at the prospect of going mano a mano with some big, armored warrior wizard to finish the campaign. This is going to suck so bad for them!]

As somebody pointed out above, look at Warcraft — orcish farmers abound. They mostly slaughter pigs, IIRC. Also, look at the LotR strategy games for 360 or PC — the Mordor side runs farms and slaughterhouses.

The PCs won’t get any xp for killing Sauron and his army: we all know that some hobbit kill-stealers will snuff Big Red Eye and his whole army before they get the chance to kill any orc…
Technically, they shouldn’t even get any XP at all for defeating Sauron…

I can imagine how the player will be pissed: “weeks of playing this bloody campaign and when we finally reach the end-level boss, he and his whole army dies of an heart attack because of some NPCs we don’t even remember??? What kind of campaign is this?”

Too bad they didn’t take their army by fleet to the south end of Mordor then and be in position to attack Farrad, move into Mordor, or starve them out.

Not that it mattered anyway since either way Sauron’s forces were overwhelmingly huge and would surround and start crushing Aragorn’s army anyway.

I guess they reasoned that Sauron would have to be an idiot not to take advantage of the stupid situation they were putting themselves into. The gambit worked because of the hobbits, and this great risk taken to keep Sauron distracted, but this easily could have been a horrible, horrible move.

Because, “gee I hope the hobbits destroy the ring this afternoon and thats the end of all this evil, cause in another hour we’ll all be orc food. If those two hobbits fell or got lost, or took a break, I guess Sauron will kill us, and then he’ll go back to keeping a lookout for the ring.”

Sewerman Says:
So our intrepid army would march 500 miles east, hit the end of the mountains, then march close to 500 miles back- a bit extreme, wot?

Pah! A mere bagatelle to someone who can ride three days out, turn round, ride three days back, heal three people, ride three days back again and still have the inner reserves to face the Might of King Mordor.

Even easier then. The entire army disbelieves these illusiory mountains. If that doesn’t work, they dispell them. If that doesn’t work Dumbledore can jolly well get busy with Mordenkainen’s Disjunction (the others will take cover behind some natural rocks while he does it).

Al Shiney Says:
At the risk of sounding like a complete geek (as if that is a problem here), I point out that the whole purpose for Gandalf's attack on the black gate was to draw the Eye of Sauron away from Mount Doom, Frodo & Sam, and The Ring. That's why there was the dramatic “eyeball roll” and Nazgul recall when Frodo claimed it for his own in such a precarious place.

Hence, “going around the back” wouldn't have even been considered a valid option, even if it were possible, which it wasn't.

NonononoNO! They go ’round the back from word one, adlepate! Dave, Sam, Aragormless, Frank, everybody. All round the back for a quick ring melting ceremony. None of this farting around in Ithilien or mooching in Moria. Get the Eagles (they’re between gigs at this point in time remember) to fly them over the mountains before that nitwit in a dress Saruman even knows they have the ring, nip ’round the back of Mordor while Sauron is still busy clicking on the “build orc” and “build troll” icons and the ring could’ve been melted down by page 350. 320 if they forego supper at that dingbat Tim Benzedrine’s pad.

Now I come to think of it, wouldn’t it be easier to get a bunch of clerics to “Poison” the water and food while it is in transit, and “Curse” the people and animals carrying it into the bargain?

After all, there’re only two routes into Mordor (if you don’t count my brilliant and totally misunderstood “back door theory”), one of which is manifestly unsuitable to passage by oliphaunts and carts, it being narrow and infested with Nazgul. The vittles probablyt have to go in through the Black Gate, so the route is pretty easy to figure out and set up ambushes on.

This King Mordor bloke doesn’t seem to have muchh on the ball. Luckily he is up against the equally braincell-challenged Aragormless.

Yea, this thread does kind of point out some failings in this whole story. How many here wondered why Gandalf did not enlist the help of the great eagles way sooner to ferry the ring (or a ring carrier) right up to Mount Doom?

I should point out that “kine” is the actual name of that animal; “cow” and “cattle” are actually both generic words for livestock and thus technically are not inaccurate to use for sheep, pigs, and other livestock. So it’s no surprise that an English Language professor would display such pedantism ^_~

1. Nobody there thought of it. They didn’t have ten million brains and an Internet to work out the details like we do. Among all of us, there are likely several people smarter than J.R.R. Tolkien on the subject, and thus would come up with a better plan than he or his “inner circle” could.

2. The Eagles were very careful about doing things that might kill them. For instance, in the Hobbit Gandalf could not even convince the Eagles to do a quick fly over Mirkwood and drop everyone off at Lake Town! The Eagles expressed a fear of humans with bows. I imagine they’d be a bit more scared of Sauron (note the Eagles did NOT go in before Sauron was already defeated).

3. Gandalf can only contact the Eagles when he’s in serious trouble. The few times the Eagles were available in the LoTR series, Gandalf generally didn’t even know where Frodo was (or was way too early to think of the Eagle Plan).

4. Perhaps Someone Wise did think of it, and also thought of what the Ring might do if it were brought into its element suddenly rather than gradually. Whoever had the Ring at that point probably couldn’t drop it when the Eagle was in position.

5. Sauron has a lot easier time spotting Eagles than, say, a pair of sneaking hobbits. Perhaps he had contingency plans in place for just such an occasion. Maybe he could shoot them down himself.

Re: Why didn’t Gandalf just get the giant eagles to carry the Ringbearers to Mount Doom?

Answer:

Stealth. The point was to sneak in the Fellowship and have them quietly destroy the Ring, not come whizzing over the mountains riding a huge, attention-worthy creature. Which of the two do you think would have attracted the notice of the Eye, or the Enemy’s countless scouts, garrisons, marching armies, etc.?

In modern times we tend to think of “flying in” as something on the order of hundreds of miles an hour. I’m not sure that a giant eagle could fly a whole lot faster than a galloping horse, giving sufficient time to raise the alarm in Mordor.

I guess they reasoned that Sauron would have to be an idiot not to take advantage of the stupid situation they were putting themselves into.

More like they played on Sauron’s paranoia. Aragorn showed himself to Sauron in the palantir and stared him down. Then he united Man under his banner and got them to march against the Black Gate with a relatively tiny army. Sauron only understands evil and domination, so he figured to pull this off Aragorn had to have claimed and mastered the One Ring. So, he sent his army out to go get it.

Oh, and I don’t have my books handy but I’m pretty sure I remember a passage where Tolkien says Sauron had “raised the Mountains of Shadow about his land in imitation of his former master’s raising of Utumno” or some such thing. And as has been pointed out, Sauron was originally a Maia of Aule, so he’d certainly know how to create real mountains from scratch, not illusory ones.

Um. Getting back to the idea of starving out Sauron’s forces, shouldn’t one point out that the besieging army (Stare-agorn’s) would have even less food? Unless they had a nicely vulnerable supply train following them, they weren’t going to be eating for very long either.

More reasons not to fly eagles to Mordor to drop the ring in Mt. Doom:

1. There was no open crater to drop it in. In both the book and movie Frodo had to enter a cave. Eagles don’t do well in caves.

2. Eagles cannot fly forever and don’t carry spare fuel tanks on their wings. It’s a long way from Gondor to Mt. Doom. It is not likely they could fly the full distance without being spotted, and once spotted, they would likely have to stop and rest, and then they would be at the mercy of the numberless legions of Sauron.

3. Sauron showed himself able to control winds and weather to a substantial extent. Upon seeing eagles attempting to fly into his domain, it is highly likely that he could create atmospheric conditions that could injure or kill the eagles, or at least drive them to ground where his minions could kill them.

I love how everyone always counters the suggestion of eagles by saying they dare not enter Mordor. One would think they would realise that the bulk of the journey is not within Mordor. So they can’t take you to Mount Doom. Fine. Why exactly can’t they take you to the Dead Marshes? That would cut about 500 miles off your journey.

simple. Orcs eat meat. Sometimes they eat other orcs, sometimes they go out and hunt down other beings, and occasionally they eat the horses. Let’s see, Stare-agorn and his army are sitting out there. Supply trains are vulnerable. More evil armies are marching toward Mordor. Pick off a few of the army as they try to starve out the orcs, and as we know there is at least ONE back way into Mordor, which means they can get out and get food that way, too.

5. Eagles are known to be rather vain, haughty and mean-spirited, even among the noble races there are some who “go bad.” Perhaps there was not a single giant eagle, not even Gwahir himself, who would not have fallen under the spell of the ring, and delivered Frodo direclty to Sauron with the ring. Remember, a major premise of the book was that even Gandalf was sorely tempted to use the ring, and Frodo was acknowledged to be the least susceptible to the ring’s wiles, and in the end, he too succumbed to it’s evil temptations. Frodo was destined for the task, remember, not Gwahir.